Halsey

 

It’s 2009 and I’m 14 and I’m crying

Not really sure where I am, but I’m holding the hand of my best friend Sam

In the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood

The air is clean and the walls are that not grey but green 

and the lights are so bright they could burn a hole through the seam of my jeans 

and my phone is buzzing in the pocket. My mom is asking me if I remembered my keys cause she’s closing the door and she needs to lock it 

but I can’t tell my mom where I’ve gone. I can’t tell anyone at all. 

You see my best friend Sam was raped by a man that we knew because he worked in the after School program 

and he held her down with her text books beside her and he covered her mouth and then he …came …inside her 

so now I’m with Sam at the place with a plan waiting for the results of a medical exam 

and she’s praying she doesn’t need an abortion as she couldn’t afford it and her parents would like totally kill her. 

It’s 2002 and my family just moved and the only people I know where my mom‘s friends sue and her son he’s got a case of matchbox cars and he says that he’ll teach me to play the guitar if I just keep quiet

 the stairwell beside apartment 1245 will haunt me in my sleep for as long as I am alive and I’m too young to know why it aches in my thighs, but I must lie. I must lie

it’s 2012 and I’m dating a guy and I sleep in his bed and I just learned how to drive and he’s older, older than me and he drinks whiskey neat and he’s paying for everything this adult thing’s not cheap. 

We’ve been fighting a lot almost 10 times a week and he wants to have sex and I just wanna sleep but he says I can’t say no to him, this much I owed to him, he buys my dinner so I have to blow him. He’s taken to forcing me down on my knees and I’m confused cause he’s hurting me while he says please and he’s only a man and these things he just needs. he’s my boyfriend so why am I filled with unease? 

It’s 2017 and I live like a queen and I’ve followed damn near every one of my dreams. I’m invincible and I’m so fucking naive. I believe I’m protected because I live on a screen. Nobody would dare act that way around me, I’ve earned my protection, eternally clean until a man that I trust that his hands in my pants, but I don’t want none of that. I just wanted to dance and I wake up the next morning like I’m in a trance there’s blood.  is that my blood? Oh. 

You can’t put your hands on me you don’t know what my body has been through. I’m supposed to be safe now. I earned it. It’s 2018 and I’ve realised that nobody is safe as long as SHE is alive and every friend that I know has a story like mine 

And the world tells me we should take it as a compliment but then heroes like Ashley and Simone and Gabby Michaela and gaga Rosario Ali remind me this is the beginning, it is not the finale. 

and that’s why we’re here and that’s why we rally it’s Olympian and a medical resident and not one fucking word from the man who is president.

it’s about closed doors and secrets and legs and stilettos from the Hollywood Hills to the project and ghetto when babies are ripped from the arms of teen mothers and child brides cry globally under the covers who don’t have a voice on the magazine cover they tell us cover but we are not free until all of us are free so your neighbour please treat her kindly ask her her story and then shut up and listen black Asian poor wealthy trans Muslim Christians listen listen and then yell at the top of your lungs VA boy for all those who have prisoner tongues for the people who had to grow up way too young there is work to be done. There are sons to be sung Lord knows there’s a war to be one one.